Southwest Fox 2014
Southwest Xbase++ 2014
October 16-19, 2014
SanTan Elegante Conference Center
Gilbert, AZ
Speakers
Click a session topic for a description of that session.
Peter Alderliesten
Peter Alderliesten is owner of Solvention bv, a software development company. He comes from a Clipper background and started developing in Xbase++ in 1999. He develops vertical applications and is advising clients on conversions from Clipper and xHarbour to Xbase++. He was in charge of the product development at Emergo Systems bv. The company became market leader in HRD software targeting sheltered workshops, with installations of 100+ concurrent users.
Peter started speaking on Xbase++ subjects for the Software Developers Group in the Netherlands and later for the Xbase++ eXchange Platform. The XXP is the Dutch Xbase++ user group of which he was a founding member. He currently holds the position of chairman of the Xbase++ user group.
Sessions:
Stephen J. Bodnar
Steve Bodnar is the President of Geeks and Gurus, Inc., a software development company with offices in Detroit, MI, Kalamazoo, MI and Colorado Springs, CO.
Steve started developing FoxPro applications with FoxPro for DOS 2.0. He actively develops VFP line of business applications as well as websites using Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. Steve was one of the founding members of the Detroit Area FoxPro Users Group and has attended Fox conferences as often as possible since the early 1990's.
Steve has spoken at VFP conferences and user groups in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Toledo, Milwaukee, Sacramento and Atlanta. He's also spoken at .NET user groups, Code Camps and conferences in Grand Rapids, Raleigh, Richmond, Roanoke, Northern Virginia, Chattanooga, Philadelphia, Knoxville and The Wisconsin Dells.
Geeks and Gurus develops line of business applications and websites for small and medium sized organizations. It delivers solutions based on Microsoft technologies such as Visual FoxPro, SQL Server and .NET.
You can learn more about Steve and Geek and Gurus at http://www.geeksandgurus.com.
Sessions:
Twitter Bootstrap: A Comprehensive Framework for Modern Web Development
Web APIs: Getting Paid, Making Calls and Other Cool Tricks (pre-conference)
Rick Borup
Rick Borup is owner and president of Information Technology Associates, a professional software development, computer services, and information systems consulting firm he founded in 1993. Rick earned BS and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois and spent several years developing software applications for mainframe computers before turning to PC database development tools in the late 1980s. He began working with FoxPro in 1991, and has worked full time in FoxPro and Visual FoxPro since 1993. He is a co-author of the books Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions and Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years. He has written articles for FoxTalk and FoxPro Advisor, and is a frequent speaker at Visual FoxPro conferences and user groups. Rick is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in Visual FoxPro.
Sessions:
Refactoring VFP Code: If it Ain't Broke, Fix it
String Theory: Working with Serial Data in VFP
Roger Donnay
Roger Donnay is the owner of Donnay Software Designs, a Boise, Idaho firm specializing in programming and consulting in the Xbase++ language. Roger started using xBase languages in 1982 with dBASE II. His product, dCLIP, was voted "Best Clipper Add-on" by readers of Database Advisor magazine. Roger has 12 years of experience with Xbase++ and developed the product eXpress++, a library designed specifically for Clipper-developers to leverage their knowledge of xBase dialects in a way that eases the transition from text-based to GUI. Xbase++/eXpress++ applications are now in use by thousands of end-users in the USA and Europe. Roger has been speaking at Clipper- and Xbase++ -Developer Conferences around the world since 1988.
Sessions:
eXpress++ Pre-Conference Workshop (pre-conference)
Xbase++ Language Concepts for Newbies
Xbase++ Multi-threading for Newbies
Spyros Bobby Drakos
Spyros Bobby Drakos started programming on an IBM 360/370 Mainframe after graduating with a B.S. in Management Information Systems and a B.S. in pre-medicine from Pace University. After a small stint teaching system design, he landed a job in the field of medical diagnostics after which he was he was asked to work on projects for the US Department of Defense. From there he started designing software for video rental, dental laboratory and building management companies.
When not programming, he serves as musical director or production manager for local stage productions. He is also a vocal coach and teaches triple threat classes.
Today he owns Business Development Micro Systems and consults for the Taxi Limousine Industry of New York City. He currently maintains software for Law firms, insurance companies, Taxi Meter shops and Medallion leasing companies as well as Transportation companies in Puerto Rico.
Sessions:
Bo Durban
Bo Durban is the founder and primary consultant of Moxie Data, Inc. He has been a software developer for over 20 years with an emphasis on reporting and Web development. He is the author of several reporting utilities including Moxie Report Objects for Visual FoxPro.
Bo is the project manager for the GDIPlusX project and the VFP9 Reporting APPs, located on VFPX, a community effort to create open source add-ons for Visual FoxPro 9.0. He has spoken at software developer conferences around the world as well as User Group meetings. Bo also has written technical articles for software development publications such as CoDe and FoxTalk.
Sessions:
Desktop to the Web? No Need to Eat that Elephant in One Bite (pre-conference)
Managing Images With GDIPlusX
Toni M. Feltman
Toni Feltman, a Microsoft Certified Professional, is an experienced software developer, project manager, instructor and speaker. Currently Toni serves as the Application Development Manager for CoreLogis, LLC, a Westerville, OH company that specializes in Inventory and Asset management software for local to international government entities. She is also Vice President and a Partner at F1 Technologies and is still an integral part of the company. During her 15 years at F1 Technologies she has served as both a developer and project manager on numerous projects and as Product Manager for the highly successful FoxExpress product line.
Toni is a well known contributor to the Visual FoxPro development community. She has spoken at most major FoxPro conferences in North America and Europe over the last several years. Although Toni has expertise in a number of areas, she generally focuses her presentations on Team Development, XML, n-Tier Development and new features in Visual FoxPro. In 2011, Toni was honored by the FoxPro community with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of her contributions to the community throughout her career.
Toni has penned several articles for Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro and is co-author of What's New in Visual FoxPro 9.0 (Hentzenwerke Publishing). Toni also designed and developed Project HookX, a public domain utility designed to allow developers to manage and use multiple project hooks on a single Visual FoxPro Project. Toni is one of several co-authors of DBCX, a public domain data dictionary tool used or supported by many notable Visual FoxPro products including the Stonefield Data Dictionary, Visual FoxExpress, FoxFire! and Stonefield Query.
Toni taught for several years at the University of Toledo on a wide variety of technologies including Microsoft Office applications, XML, various Internet development technologies and database design and programming. Toni also enjoyed a stint as an instructor for AppDev.
Toni's introduction to the FoxPro community came while she worked in the technical support department at Fox Software. Toni was a senior level support technician and Sysop of the Fox Software Forum on CompuServe.
Toni graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1989 with a BA in Management Information Systems.
Sessions:
Tamar E. Granor
Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations.
Tamar is author or co-author of more than a dozen books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer and Making Sense of Sedna and SP2.
Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.
Tamar is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference and founder of the Philadelphia Visual FoxPro User Group. In 2007, she received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually from the program's inception in 1993 through 2010. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe.
You can reach her at tamar@tamargranor.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.
Sessions:
Doug Hennig
Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Software Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT); the award-winning Stonefield Query; the MemberData Editor, Anchor Editor, and CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro; and the My namespace and updated Upsizing Wizard in Sedna.
Doug is co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years, the What's New in Visual FoxPro series, and The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0. He was the technical editor of The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0 and The Fundamentals. All of these books are from Hentzenwerke Publishing (http://www.hentzenwerke.com). Doug wrote over 100 articles in 10 years for FoxTalk and has written numerous articles in FoxPro Advisor, Advisor Guide to Visual FoxPro, and CoDe. He currently writes for FoxRockX (http://www.foxrockx.com).
Doug spoke at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) starting in 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over the world. He is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ conferences (http://www.swfox.net). He is one of the administrators for the VFPX VFP community extensions Web site (http://vfpx.codeplex.com). He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) from 1996 through 2011. Doug was awarded the 2006 FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award (http://tinyurl.com/6po3pwv).
Sessions:
The Latest Techniques in Deploying VFP Applications
Windows PowerShell: Batch Files on Steroids
Andreas Herdt
Andreas Herdt was born in 1970 and finished his academic high school in 1990. His first contact with computer hardware was a Commodore C64 in the age of 15. However, the first contact with software was on an Apple IIe in a training course of information science. A turtle was to be moved in an area strewn with obstacles.
After he finalized his academic high school diploma, Andreas started as trainee for Air Traffic Control in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1995 he accommodated his passion for hardware and software. He studied Computer Science from the Information Science Polytechnic at Darmstadt where he focused on color electronic page setting and simulation technology. Andreas Herdt graduated in 2000 with a Master's degree. His thesis was about quality assurance for GUI applications. An internship brought him to Alaska Software where he got in touch with the Web Application Adaptor (WAA). Since then he constantly developed his appetite for more leading finally him to work for Alaska Software.
Today Andreas benefits from the experiences and passion—among other areas—algorithms in improving the Xbase++ Runtime environment. He is involved in research on multi-core scalability and transactional memory.
Sessions:
Debugging Xbase++ Desktop and Web Applications
Tips & Tricks for Xbase++ developers
Rick Hodder
Rick Hodder is currently a Senior Developer at Ellkay, LLC in Teaneck, NJ, where he develops healthcare-related solutions with technologies including VFP, .NET, ASP.NET, WCF, and SQL Server, with a focus on cloud-based solutions.
In Rick's 20+ years of development he has worked with Xbase languages including dBase III plus and Foxpro version 2.0 up through VFP7. Rick was a huge fan of GENSCRNX and was the creator of the LASSO driver. Rick worked for Flash Creative Management (a premier VFP consulting firm, home of the "Codebook" framework), published numerous articles in FoxPro Advisor and FoxTalk, and was a speaker at several Foxpro Devcons.
In his spare time, Rick studies, teaches and performs improv comedy. He is the Creative Director of http://improvbyexample.com where he offers presentations on teamwork and communication using improv techniques.
Rick trained with Gotham City Improv in NYC and performed in their ensembles for two years (a group of the famous LA Groundlings who moved to NYC and started a school). He has also been training with the Upright Citizen's Brigade in NYC (a group that was stated in part by Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live, graduates from which are appearing in The Office and major motion pictures).
Ellkay (http://www.ellkay.com) is a recognized nationwide leader, providing healthcare connectivity solutions and services.
Sessions:
Eric Lendvai
Eric Lendvai has been the President of the Visual FoxPro Developers Group of San Diego for the last 20 years and the owner of EL SoftWare, Inc. He specializes in large-scale corporate and commercial applications.
Eric began developing PC applications in FoxPro 1.0, and for the last 15 years, he has mainly developed Web Applications using VFP. Currently, his first and foremost priority is to convert more than 1 million lines of VFP code to xBase++.
Sessions:
Converting an Actual VFP App to Xbase++, One Year Later
Xbase++ From a VFP Developers Perspective
Jim Nelson
Jim Nelson spent the first thirty years of his professional life programming in APL, a long-since extinct programming language. For the last twenty of those years, he worked as a full-time employee for a company that sold workers' compensation self-insurance. During those years, he earned a reputation throughout the APL community for building tools to aid in the development of APL systems.
His VFP career began in 2003, working for the Kong Company in Golden, Colorado. He works full-time for them, acting as their software development department, primarily in inventory and financial applications.
His involvement in VFPx projects (including Thor, PEM Editor, IntellisenseX, Finder, and FoxCharts) mirrors his long time interest in developing programmers' tools. He was a presenter at SWFox in 2009 and 2011.
Jim lives in Newbury Park, California, with his wife of 41 years.
Sessions:
Matthew J. Olson
Matthew Olson is a software developer for ACEware Systems, Inc. in Manhattan, KS. He graduated from Kansas State University in 2005 with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science. He started working for ACEware Systems in 2008 and was introduced to VFP. He is the primary developer working on the Student Manager desktop application. Matthew's hobbies include writing fiction novels/short stories, making wine, golfing, and coin collecting.
Sessions:
Manipulating Data with WestWind's Business Objects
WYSIWYG HTML Editing with VFP
Frank Perez
Frank Perez is a software developer in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He started his programming career in Microsoft FoxPro for DOS working for a vertical market payroll and billing software company. For the last 6 years he has been working with a great team at White Light Computing, Inc., where he gets to work on a variety of projects using FPD, VFP 7/8/9, C#, SQL Server, and ASP.NET MVC.
When Frank is not working or spending time with his family, he is out running marathons, riding his motorcycle, or renovating his house.
Sessions:
PostgreSQL vs Microsoft SQL Server (pre-conference)
Steffen F. Pirsig
Steffen F. Pirsig holds the position as Chief Architect since having started out with the first design and implementation of Xbase++ in Oct. 1994. He also is a co-founder of Alaska Software and President of Alaska Software, Inc.
As a frequent speaker at various developer conferences as well as at universities, Steffen manages to combine his passion for database management systems, distributed computing and of course Xbase++, with his love for engaging into shop talks and in-depth discussions while presenting his ideas and visions to an interested audience.
Steffen enjoys good wines, hiking, bicycling and music of independent labels. He also likes to fly RC planes in his spare time.
Sessions:
Multi-tier Application Architecture with Xbase++
Xbase++ 2.0 Workshop (pre-conference)
Xbase++, Beyond the Frontier!
Kevin Ragsdale
Kevin is a developer for The Net Results (a Charlotte, NC company focused on internet marketing), creating commercial Visual FoxPro applications since 2007 (full-time since 2009). He has worked with FoxPro since 1993 (starting with FoxPro 2.6 for Windows, and continuing through Visual FoxPro 9.0). He is the author and project manager for the Desktop Alerts project on VFPX. Kevin writes the occasional Visual FoxPro-related blog post and frequently posts insightful, life-changing thoughts about a multitude of subjects (in 140 characters or less) on Twitter.
Sessions:
More Multi-Threading With Visual FoxPro
Unicode Made Easier With SQLite
Rick Schummer
Rick Schummer is the president and lead geek at White Light Computing, Inc., headquartered in southeast Michigan, USA where the team guides the customer's Information Technology investment toward success. He enjoys working with top-notch developers, thrives on the mode of continuous learning, has a passion for developing software using best practices, strives to surpass customer expectations, and shares his knowledge with others whenever he can. After hours you might find him creating developer tools that improve developer productivity, or writing articles for his favorite technology journals and his blog.
Rick is a co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices for the Next Ten Years, What's New In Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits, Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions, MegaFox: 1002 Things You Wanted To Know About Extending Visual FoxPro, and 1001 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Visual FoxPro. He is a regular presenter at user groups across North America and is founding member and Secretary of the Detroit Area Fox User Group (DAFUG). Rick is the lead organizer of the Southwest Fox Conference, and is a regular presenter at other conferences in North America, Europe, and Australia. He is an administrator of VFPX, and a Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP from 2002 to 2011. Rick was awarded the FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2010.
You can contact Rick via email at raschummer@whitelightcomputing.com or via his company Web site: White Light Computing, Inc.. Read more of his thoughts on Visual FoxPro and software development in his blog: Shedding Some Light.
Sessions:
Inspiring Everyday Practical IntelliSense
VFPX.Edition("2014")
Phil Sherwood
Phil Sherwood is the president of SherWare, Inc., a software company founded in 1994, with offices in Wooster, Ohio and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Phil received his B.S. in computer science from Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, TN and worked for several years as a systems programmer in the IBM mainframe world before downsizing his career to the PC world. He started consulting for small businesses and helping them computerize their accounting systems. After a couple of oil & gas producers asked him to develop some software specific to their industry he started learning FoxPro for DOS and later switched to FoxPro for Windows and VFP. Like most vertical market software providers, he fell into a niche and started marketing the software.
Today SherWare, Inc. provides accounting software to over 600 oil & gas operating companies around the U.S. and Canada. SherWare can be found on the web at www.sherware.com and www.wellprofits.com.
When Phil is not working he's playing. He enjoys boating, rock climbing, paddle boarding and playing with his grand kids.
Phone: 330.262.0200
Email: phil@sherware.com
Sessions:
Getting Things Done - Productivity for the Entrepreneur
The Entrepreneur's Toolkit: Useful Tools and Techniques for a Software Business
Till Warweg
Till graduated with a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Information Science Polytechnic in Frankfurt/Main.
In 1997, Till joined Alaska Software straight from college. His primary project was the development of Xbase++ for the Windows platform. Soon thereafter, he assumed responsibilities in maintaining and enhancing Xbase++'s user interface functionalities. His special interest, and maybe therefore his strong suits are the Graphics Engine and the component library built into Xbase++ (Xbase Parts). Till is also involved in various other areas of product development at Alaska Software. For example, he is a key member in the "PolarFox" project team.
Till is a frequent speaker at various developers conferences and other events surrounding Xbase++, both in Europe and in the US. Apart from his interest in computing, Till enjoys riding his motorcycle, exercising, and reading a good book.
Sessions:
Developing Touch-Aware Applications with Xbase++
Using the WebUI in Xbase++ Desktop Applications
Christof Wollenhaupt
Christof Wollenhaupt, head of Foxpert, offers FoxPro and .NET development and consulting services to customers who benefit from his nearly 20 years of experience. Christof is a regular speaker at conferences and user groups around the world, organizes the Hamburger Stammtisch für Microsoft Datenbankentwickler (Hamburg user group for Microsoft database developers), has written for various magazines including a regular column in FoxPro Advisor for more than 10 years, and was a Visual FoxPro MVP from 1997 to 2010.
Sessions:
Lessons Learned: SQL Server (pre-conference)
Tablet PC Applications with Visual FoxPro
